NAPSTER CLAIMS IT HAS DONE EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO COMPLY WITH RULING

Napster's compliance report complains about the Recording Industry Association Of America's policy of "asserting that they have no duty to provide notice of any file name(s) containing infringing work

NAPSTER has responded to Tuesday’s court injunction demanding it remove copyrighted material from its service by delivering a compliance report, claiming that it has done everything in its power to comply with the ruling.

The file-sharing website claims to have loaded approximately six million file names and 26,000 artist or title files to be filtered from its system.

The report points out that because of the potentially limitless number of alternative file names available, it would have to shut down its service to ensure that no copyrighted files are swapped. Napster also complains that the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) of “asserting that they have no duty to provide notice of any file name(s) containing infringing works”.

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According to [url=]www.sonicnet.com, Napster CEO Harry Bank gave the example of Sony Music, who sent Napster 95,000 song titles, but didn’t provide file names for up to half of those titles, hence failing to comply with the injunction. Napster called for the court to offer a “prompt resolution” to the problem, while the RIAA’s Amy Weiss accused Napster of “stall tactics”.

Without file names, the report maintains, Napster faces a near impossible task. “If the plaintiffs continue to make available massive catalogues of song titles and artists without corresponding file names, it would exacerbate Napster’s compliance workload to impossible levels and shut down its meaningful efforts to prevent the transfer of allegedly infringing works.”

As the current situation stands, Napster is filtering songs not owned by the infringed copyright owner. For example, blocking one file will also exclude cover versions of that song that have not asked to have been screened. Furthermore, the report points its finger at Metallica for submitting songs by the Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Creed that they have covered.

Napster highlighted its determination to comply with the court’s ruling by teaming up with Gracenote, a file recognition service. Gracenote has a database with three million variations on more than three million artist/song title pairs and will strengthen Napster’s screening capabilities.

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